OAKLAND — With the goal of expanding options for Oakland residents who can’t afford traditional homes, the City Council on Tuesday approved a package of ordinances that allow RVs, mobile homes, manufactured homes and tiny houses to occupy residential properties throughout the city.
In amending the city’s zoning and building codes to permit those structures — referred to as “vehicular residential facilities” — the council eliminated a decades-old city requirement that all residential units be built on a permanent foundation. That requirement effectively outlawed RVs in Oakland. But as the homeless population has grown in recent years, hundreds of them have been parked around the city.
In addition to giving RV and mobile home dwellers legal and safe spots to settle in, the council placed them under the protection of the city’s rent control laws.
The ordinances will become law when the council formally adopts them in mid-November.
City leaders noted such steps must be taken in the Bay Area, where the housing market is one of the nation’s most expensive.
“We have very serious housing challenges,” said District 1 Councilmember Dan Kalb, who worked on the ordinances with Mayor Libby Schaaf and Councilmember Sheng Thao. “There is no one solution that’s going to solve it all. Often what we do is piece together various solutions to help solve at least a portion of it. This is one of those things.”
In a statement after the vote, Schaaf said, “I’m proud that our City Council unanimously voted to approve a truly historic ordinance that creates more housing affordability and security for Oaklanders. Today’s action means Oakland is a national leader in addressing the housing crisis by updating our zoning and building codes to promote flexibility and innovation, including the legalization of safe RVs and Tiny Homes on private property.”
The amendments to city codes will allow people to legally park their RVs and mobile homes on private properties in all residential areas if they comply with tenancy and habitability codes, including a requirement that the units be “structurally sound, protect occupants against the weather, include permanent provisions for living and sleeping, include heating and lighting, and provide occupants with 24-hour on-site access to potable water, a kitchen, and clean, lighted, code-compliant toilet, bathing facilities, and lavatory sink under the occupants’ control,” according to a city memo.
Each vehicular facility would be considered a residential unit, subject to the same density limitations as the neighborhoods they’re located in.
As long as the occupants of two or more RVs on a lot don’t pay rent, they would be exempt from a state law that requires them to have their own kitchens, bathrooms and potable water lines inside. But they would need to have access to those amenities on the site.
Adam Garrett-Clark, who leases a 10th Street lot where people have lived in an unsanctioned mobile home community for six years, told the council he believes the ordinances are still too restrictive in forcing RV dwellers to abide by zoning and expensive sewage-connection requirements.
“The ordinance should pass, but it will not have much impact on the affordability crisis,” Garrett-Clark said, noting that his RV community has done fine using a portable restroom service that costs about $200 a month.
But others cautioned against making the rules too flexible.
“What we don’t want to be doing is creating the same housing that housing enforcement laws were created to change,” said Leah Simon-Weisberg, the legal director for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. “The regulations are really important. While folks want there to be flexibility, hundreds of years of evidence show that we need sewers.”
City staff will explore alternative methods for sewage-disposal compliance and report back to council.
Some speakers complained that the city’s occupancy permit fees are too high — $998 for sites with one to four mobile homes and $4,500 for those with five or more.
The city last year adopted a pilot program that allows a single RV on a vacant parcel with an annual permit as long as the applicant provides evidence that there is access to water, power and sewage disposal. The new rules will replace that pilot program, which only had three applications.
Although the city’s rent adjustment ordinance does not apply to units built after Jan. 1, 1983, because of restrictions in state law, city officials concluded mobile homes are an exception “because they are considered vehicles, not buildings, and are not issued certificates of occupancy,” according to a staff memo.
“We know we have a homelessness crisis,” Thao said. “We are working with rain now. We need to make sure we get as many people off the streets as we can. This is working toward making sure we have different avenues and different paths for housing-insecure (people).”
